ABSTRACT
What distinguishes football as a form of popular culture is that it can provide one of the key vehicles for the ritual articulation of identity, be it through the expression of regional pride, local patriotism or national belonging. Equally, football makes available a means for expressing the boundaries of inclusion, exclusiveness, xenophobia and racism. Evidence of racism in football first became a subject of widespread concern in the late seventies and eighties, a time when there was increasing racist behaviour related to football and attempts by extreme right-wing movements to use football as a basis for recruitment (Clarke 1973, 1978). Groups such as the National Front were regularly seen selling their newspapers and magazines outside football grounds. But interest in the issue was also partly related to the increasing presence of black players amongst the ranks of professional footballers during the period since the 1970s. With the emergence of black players at all levels of football, phenomena such as racist chanting and abuse directed at them became a common occurrence at many football grounds. What was striking about the fan racism of this period was the premeditated quality it possessed. Fans would prepare to perform their racism by taking bananas to throw at black players or writing hate mail letters. Cyrille Regis played alongside two other black players – Laurie Cunningham and Brendon Batson – for West Bromwich Albion in the early eighties. He remembered:
‘We used to get letters all the time, you know . . . When I was called up for England for the first time there was a letter, an anonymous letter saying ‘If you go to Wembley and put on an England shirt you’ll get one of these through your knees’. There was a bullet in the envelope.’1
